App’s Guitar Arpeggios and Chord Encyclopedia

I’ve had these two books in a drawer for about 15 years. My wife, Jill, brought them home with a bunch of records that she found from at estate sale in El Monte, CA while I was out of town. I’d glance through them from time to time and wondered about this App person who put together these nicely done, educational guitar books.

Recently I’ve been looking through the arpeggio book so I did a quick google search which turned up nothing. Then I posted a picture of the books on Instagram and within a few minutes, Deke Dickerson responded with a link to a website for O.W. Appleton who is quite possibly the guy who should be credited with being the first to build a solid body electric guitar. Check out his
amazing story here.

Deke also said that he had a handwritten letter, from Appleton to RC Allen describing in detail about how Gibson’s salesman came through Iowa, saw his guitar and based the Les Paul on it!

On the inside cover of each book, there is a note from App to his friends “Hub and Evelyn”. With RC living in El Monte, this is most likely how the books ended up at the estate sale there. Maybe they were all friends? I’m glad to know more about App and what he contributed to the history of the electric guitar. The copyright on the books is from 1970. If you ever see them, they’re worth picking up.